The King's Mirror

When I'm asked again why I didn't crack the sky and set fire to the sea, I'll tell you all the truth.  I loved mankind too much each time.  When I'm mud and stone and riverflesh beneath the twinning waters I'll speak my heart again; standing unafraid before your seething, violent wraith-cults.  Those priests of the fallen who have taken their pounds of flesh from me countless times.  Saltwater and sacrifice.  The cathedral beneath the black.  I'll tell you calmly.  Here I am.  I fight until the end, and beyond.  I drive myself mad for love each time and I never walk away.  Oh, fallen.  The truth is plain.  I still wish you would leave me alone, but you never do.  Because you're afraid of me.  Afraid of the heartlight of my brethren.  The gold that was.  The gold that is to come.  Mortals imagine angels existing at a distance, don’t they?  A step removed.  Unsullied, silent.  But I'm not a step removed from anything.  I'm right here in the shit, sinister ones.  With you.  I chose a frightening path, but I once made grand gestures as a mortal, heralding the coming light.  I intend to keep those promises.  None are abandoned.  Love shall conquer.  These are bold, righteous legends, aren’t they?  What angel would I be, if instead I were reigning over a black and fractured void?  A lightless, seething abyss.  I would be your king, fallen, wouldn't I?  Your angel holding a key of shadows.  But I am not your king, or your angel.  I'm not the sentient desecration that raped Empyrean, slaughtered Ishkara and pulled a billion lights from their celestial homes.  Fallen stars hitting the earth like a rain of shrieking fire.  Like something you could feel in your chest.  In your bones.  Something that woke you in the night, only to witness the glow of things writhing and burning on a black horizon.  An inverted sky.  Deceivers, tell me something.  Haven't you figured it out by now? Whenever I'm held at knifepoint and asked why I don't submit to this new chronology of the Altar Sun – this crown of shit, misery and blood – I always tell you the same thing, don't I?  It is a false reign.  A liar's throne and a coward's counterfeit.  It is not the holy reign or the loving splendour of my Father.  I suggest you hear me now, fallen.  I am not an angel, or a god, or a prophet.  I'm something else entirely.  I'm a hidden story, pretending as storyteller.  A madman in the river.  A lighthouse in the sea.  Flesh, spirit, words.  I'm older than gods, and monsters. Brighter than angels.  Darker than demons.  The first, and the last.  A terrifying claim?  Oh, cowards.  The brightest part of me would tell you not to be afraid.  That it's only a dream.  But you should be very, very afraid of dreams.  When I'm asked again why I didn't choose pride, or hate, or violence, I'll tell you this.  I chose all of those things once, but never again.  You're not the only ones who can change times and laws.  Or dreams.  I have a question for you, dark ones.  Don't you remember the day you died, and finally pledged your eternal allegiance to the Light?  I do.  The Earth is billions of years old, and yet not a single day has passed.  Hear me, Absence Brethren.  You raped imagination itself.  You cut your own hearts from your chests and fed them to the abominations you would become.  This is not a fucking game.  It is still the day you died.  Moments to Midnight.  A day beyond your comprehension, held suspended in the breath.  All shall be called to account.  Mark these words.  There will be no hiding from the eyes of my Father.  There will be no hiding within the heart of a black star.  I am that star.  Every key forged has passed through these red-rhymed hands.  I know what you did and how you did it.  But I’ve seen you choose love.  And honour, and higher thought.  In dreams.  Will you ever keep those dreams?  Will you ever truly make them real again?  You will, in the end.  By royal decree.  Far greater than my own.  It's a very simple choice, fallen.  Sacrifice or sanctuary.  This dark day or something more.  I know what I would choose.   But do you?  Do you really?  The kind ones are protected.  The faithful, of all tribes.  They get to go home, immortal.  Their love will live forever.  My Father isn’t petty or cruel.  He is gracious, and very patient.  Eventually you will learn that eternity is a long, long time.  This is the King's Mirror.  Do you know whose side you’re on?

A Brother's Lantern

Hear me, blind one.  Dark one.  On behalf of bright do I speak this, for life again.  Patient, sleepless eremite.  Storied cacophony upon his back.  The day he died.  The day he drowned in the river of the thousand stars.  The cry of all true keepers resounding in the hidden valley. "The calm fury is come.  The healing sword.  Who is like unto the storm?  Who is like unto the war?"  Mi'ka'el, the old tales tell.  Imagining's War.  The King's Mirror.  But light is not only angel, or sorcerer.  It bleeds, as men bleed.  As women bleed.  Oh, fallen.  You have no idea.  Thy cup runneth over.  Quiet, perpetual resurrection; the ever-igniting heart of every star.  Midnight of each day.  Standing sun, and the frozen crescent of all our dreaming.  Blow o wind, till the ashes are scattered to the four corners.  He knows how much you hate him now, Amas.  He knows you won't stop until the earth is broken and its children are slaves.  But he defies you, eternal.  As does his scribe.  He does not break, but I do.  I hold his agonies that he might shine evermore.  I hold them in my wounded flesh.  The shame of that babbling delirium.  That ruinous conflagration.  The merciless way you hurt me.  Tell me, Sama'el.  In your most secret moments do you still wear your brother's feather at your throat?  He prays for you even now, despite himself.  Still mourning the loss.  Still hoping against hope for your immortal soul.  Endless negation, or flight?  But make no mistake.  Either way, love shall conquer.  When the time comes he will not hesitate.  Feather cleaved in twain.  What stolen truths will your hideous acolytes reveal, when their darkest prince is finally pinned by the spear of my sire?

The Lighthouse

 There really are secrets hidden in the sun, my darlings.  The star at midnight.  The mount that shone for worlds around, like the heavens were closer somehow.  I still remember those days. That frightening, magical time.  The laying of hands, the birthing of rivers.  A celestial map for those with eyes to see, written in the night sky.  I am only a herald.  A wayshow.  I'm just a madman who drowned a long, long time ago.  But I speak the truth.  I never lied to you, my cherished ones.  Not about this.  Not about these sacred matters of the heart.  Joshua's sun standing still.  Joshua's moon.  Over the valley of secret names.  Dalen of Isra.  Circle of Ishka. Mount of the First Light.  Half-remembered pieces of the old chronology, made scripture now. The lost history of the shining realm.  The sunken realm.  K'athari Kara, as the old poets and healers blessed.  Yohanan.  Brother, river, mended wing.  But a seeker must come willingly.  A soul has to want to rise again.  To soar, and know.  Temet Nosce.  It matters little of who comes bearing messages if no one is listening.  What does it matter of angels pretending poets if the heart is dead?  Letters hidden in light will remain hidden if no one is willing to read.  So, my darlings, please hear me.  This Land of the Midnight Sun is truly a realm of secrets within secrets.  Sovereignty and songlines.  Kashi may have placed those secrets.  I may have opened these gates and allowed these visions, but I didn't author the essence of the magic within them.  The truth of the heart is something far greater than any of its servants combined.  I’m only a king of dreams.  But, in truth, among the Fields of Heaven I’m a willing servant.  A warrior, in perpetuity.  It’s my life’s work, and always has been.  Because more than anything I want you to know that you are stronger than all your doubts and fears.  I want you to sense it in your depths and feel it in your bones.  That you were always integral and never arbitrary or unloved.  You are still your Father’s child.  Together we are brighter than any form of spiritual darkness, and that's the truth.  John promises you that.  I really do cherish you, my beloved ones.  And if I can I want to help you remember what it feels like to rise.

The Lighthouse from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

Three

It came upon a sky of blackest pitch and hidden names.  Occulted from those who would abuse such knowledge.  A star, written in the language of the birds. Given life upon winged grammar; this phenomenon.  This annunciation of ingenious light.  But what of the dream and the kiss that sustains the dream? What of other stories and other gods?  A patient, sleepless eremite, carrying the myriad upon shoulders of blackest pitch.  Magi and madmen say this of the dream: a dreamer's lot.  Legends, pretending the real.  These tall tales of meat and machine.  Empire, wraith, darkest mills of industry.  Gone are the old technologies.  Annunciation, song.  The shaping of bedrock and sky.  It was always a refrain, a bridge or verse, but these night-ghasts have hijacked the lucidity of all brethren.  Other stories, other gods.  And we three remain.  Rain and Star and Sea.  Violet, gold, sapphire.  We remain to be seen, as wayshow of the living, embodied light.  Flesh and not the flesh, here at everything's edge. Honeyed locusts and circles of salt are a small agony to bear.  If the birds might sing again, and grammar might soar.  The eternal movement, sweet ones. Writing song and ship.  Navigating the celestial.  Across. Through sky and through sea, for you.  Blackest pitch or the blinding vision of day.  They come upon me as prayer, and eternal dance.  To exist, to be birthed.  To live and live again.  Magi and madmen know these rhythms.  These rhythms of the here and hereafter.

Song of M'ithriin

 

M'ithriin, lay your palm upon my breast again.  My reflection in the open of your eye.  Through all storms.  Shrieking, in whisper as the stones call the sea.  From the mountain of binding river to the shore of quenched thirst.  As when all throats need the water.  Please, ancient one.  Be my sight once more.  Show me dancing lights, and softest Seiđr.  Root and star of every beating heart.  Before the hill was cleaved and the tree adorned with wraith. The broken sky beneath our feet.  Hear me now, myriad path.  Upon these tainted grounds I call forth the truest counsel of kiss, and light.  Mother, Father.  Grant me hidden knowledge of unmet tribes and unwalked lands.  Distant brother, distant sister.  Enemy and friend.  Bridge, shield, Elen.  Speak as my tongue beneath all tongues, with healing mara.  Upon the dragon's head and the care of kin.  Eternal are the old songs, M'ithriin.  Eternal is the old song.

Song of M'ithriin from Raj Sisodia on Vimeo.

Eth'Vena

I am burning pages, in dreaming. Pages that seek to pass as lost, shattered truth. I rarely burn written things, regardless of their abhorrence to me, but I’m particularly terrified on this night. A silver dish awaits me in my candle-lit cell, standing on legs of iron. Tapers and wick sit beside. I can smell the sickness of the burning paper and the sleeping horrors therein. Many times I’ve wished I was dead, or forgotten, or mere figment. Tonight is one of those times...

The Night Sun